Amsterdam Weekend February 12-15
It all started at 5 in the afternoon on Thursday. My bags were packed, and I was pumped up and ready to go! Rachel and I had planned out what we wanted to do and how to do it all the cheapest way possible ahead of time so there was no stressing out about that. (We even made an itinerary! Haha) At first the bus ride is fun because we are all excited, but then as the hours tick by one by one we all start to get a little sleepy and a little agitated because we can’t sleep, or at least not comfortably. I’ve slept maybe twenty minutes when its time for us to get on the ferry which leaves Dover at 1:05. (By the way, the white cliffs of Dover were beautiful and so cool. I would love to see them during the daytime.) I slept on the ferry, but not comfortably, and then reluctantly got back on the bus. At one point during the drive through France, Belgium, and The Netherlands, I actually slept in the aisle of the bus.
Finally, we arrive in Amsterdam at like 9:00 am. We check into our hostel and head to the Van Gogh museum. Luckily we went when the Starry Night exhibit was going on otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to see “Starry Night” or “The Potato Eaters.” (Van Gogh’s most famous paintings) Those and many other paintings were there on loan from museums across the world. Starry Night for example is usually in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I found it a little strange that the Van Gogh Museum didn’t have his most famous works in there.
After the Van Gogh Museum, we decided to take a canal cruise. Amsterdam has a huge canal system. That was fun and interesting. It was an hour long and we went all over the city. There were tons of houseboats there too! Not the nice ones that I was used to seeing in America, but actual boat looking houses that people lived on all the time. That was fun, but around this time I started to get very sleepy, because I had only gotten like two hours of sleep in total (not consecutive) the night before on that god awful bus ride. Nevertheless, I powered through.
After our canal cruise we took the tram to the city centre. we went to the Sex Museum, and that was interesting to say the least. It was crazy seeing all of that. Sex through the ages. By this time, I was getting almost dead tired and everyone agreed with me so we decided to go home and take a power nap and then get up to go out.
Except that didn’t happen. We went home, yes, but we didn’t wake up! All seven of us just slept right on through to the next morning. Nevertheless, we did get a good night’s sleep that night. The beds were more comfortable than my bed at Swansea! And the showers had better water pressure! We joked about how much nicer the hostel was than our actual living situation! Another nice thing about our hostel was the free breakfast! We definitely took advantage of that. There was a huge selection of different kinds of breads, meat, and cheese. For breakfast? Yes, apparently Dutch people eat lunch for breakfast. However, there were also jams and spreads (like nutella!) available for you to eat too. There was also apples, cereal (crappy cereal but cereal nonetheless), and a few juices. We ate so much because the food in Amsterdam was ridiculously expensive! So with our bellies full and our wallets still intact, we ventured out for our second day in Amsterdam.
First, we went to the Anne Frank House. The line (or should I say queue) was ridiculous when we got there, but only continued to get more and more ridiculous as we waited, which was probably about an hour. This museum was very moving and sad. I almost cried and I never cry. It was just so sad and I realized again how insane all of that was! I don’t understand how that escalated to that level. How could people have done that to other human beings? It just doesn’t make sense.
So after the Anne Frank House we needed a lift me up! We decided to go to city centre and look at shops and the national monument. Bad idea for me. If you didn’t know I am really scared of birds (and shrimp and trains and icebergs, but birds is all you need to know at this point). I usually don’t have a problem with birds though, because they are scared of humans and fly away before you can get too close. Not the case with pigeons, the nastiest and fattest ugliest birds ever. They don’t get scared of humans. In fact they ATTACK humans! Or they attacked me at least. At the National Monument there is this great big square and there are literally thousands of pigeons there as well as many people. We started walking right through a huge group of pigeons and I started to freak out a little bit. Dodging pigeons here and there, looking like a crazy person. Of course, everyone I am with thinks my terror is the funniest thing they have ever seen. Finally, we get through the big group and my heart starts to slow down again. We are standing around about to go to China Town when I see a hot dog stand. I walk over to buy one (because its cheap) and just as I’m about to add toppings a swarm of birds comes at me. I’m too scared to put any toppings on so I run to my group and make Karl go put my toppings on my hot dog for me. As I am waiting there is another pigeon coming towards our group. I hide behind someone, and I guess it sensed my fear because it kept trying to get me! I ran around the circle and it ran after me! I kept running and then another bird joined in with him and started to come at me too! That was it for me. I ran until I couldn’t see any birds anymore and then waited for everyone else to follow.
After the bird incident we went to China Town-more like China street and ate Chinese food (dim sum). Then we went to the flower market. I was expeting it to be a huge area full of tulips (what The Netherlands is famous for) but all it was was a few stands of flowers and the rest were selling tulip bulbs...of course because tulips aren't in season yet.
After that we headed to the Heineken Brewery for the Heineken Experience! That was so cool. We got to see and learn how they make beer and we also got two free glasses of fresh Heineken! It was fantastic. It made me only want to drink fresh beer for the rest of my life...of course that will never happen. When our bartender/guide was pouring our drinks I got to be his helper and scrap the foam off the top so that it would stay and the oxygen would stay in the beer...or something like that! haha he explained it but I was too busy enjoying my beer.
Afterwards we went back to the hostel to shower and change. We ate at the restaurant in the hostel and drank a little at the bar there too before we went out on the town. So we walk and we walk and we walk and finally get to the Rembram Square, where apparrently all the fun goes down in Amsterdam. However all that we saw was a humongous line outside of two clubs and the rest were dead. We didn't want to wait in those lines only to get there and most assuredly have to pay a cover fee so we went to a pub. While there we realized that we were so worn out from our day that all we really wanted to do was go to sleep, so we just called it a night.
The next day was another god awful bus ride, but luckily it was during the day so we weren't all cranky and sleepy...we were just bored. We watched a few movies and stopped in Belgium at a chocolate factory but still we were bored and very happy to be back in Swansea when we got in at midnight.